Within Me, Without You
by EchoInTheSilence
Summary: The case was painful once. But when a rapist who walked takes drastic measures, this time around will be devastating for the most important person in her life.


**Within Me, Without You**

**Disclaimer: **If you recognize it, it's not mine.

**This story is rated T for potential mention of rape and other sexual abuse in the context of SVU's job. Don't like it, don't read it.**

**This story is something of a sequel to ****_Close to Home._**** You don't need to have read that one to understand this one, but there will be references and spoilers.**

**Chapter 1: The Day That Changed the World**

The unusual quiet in the squad room was shattered by the ring of a phone. On instinct, and eager for something to do besides paperwork, they all reached for their desk phones at once.

Amaro got to his first, lifting the receiver to his ear. "Special Victims, Detective Amaro. Okay, hold on." He pressed a button on the phone and set it down, walking over to the only separate office and tapping on the door. "Captain, line one for you."

He walked back to his desk, but had barely started again on the tedious paperwork before Cragen stepped out of the office, his face grim. "Benson, my office."

She got up and followed him. "Captain? What did I do?" It wasn't like she was entirely unfamiliar with being reprimanded for putting a toe over the line - with Elliot Stabler as her partner for twelve years, _that_ would have been a feat - but she honestly couldn't think of what she'd done this time.

"Remember Rick Purcell?"

"That scumbag who raped a woman, got her pregnant, and sued for custody?" It was a case Olivia would be hard-pressed to forget anytime soon. As an officer of the law, she couldn't agree with the woman's decision to flee jurisdiction; as a private citizen, she couldn't fault her either. "What's that got to do with me?"

Cragen let out a slow breath. "Well, turns out he's been looking for Avery and the baby himself, not just trusting the government agencies to do it for him. He snapped, Olivia."

The weight behind those words scared her. "What happened?"

"He barged into a library with a gun, he's holding hostages. Negotiator's there but he says he'll only talk to you."

"Me? Why? No, never mind," she corrected just as quickly. "We'll sort out why later. Let's go."

xxxxxxxxx

Olivia was out of the car almost before it stopped moving, even though she was dizzy from the car tearing through the street at maximum speed. It had been awhile since she'd done that.

Several dozen civilians were piled up as close to the building as the police barricade would allow. Olivia held up her badge, and the officers let her and Cragen through.

"You Benson?" the hostage negotiator called out.

"What's the situation?"

"We've got what we think is about twenty to thirty hostages inside. Maybe a half dozen employees, the rest are mostly young children and their caregivers - this is a popular time for parents to bring kids, most schools just let out for the day."

"Oh, God." Olivia felt like she'd been hit. Situations like this were always rough, but little kids added a whole new level of heartache, not to mention a lot more people who wouldn't be able to understand the situation, making everything that much more unpredictable.

The negotiator was dialing again and he handed the phone to Olivia. She forced herself to draw a breath as she heard it ring, and then a voice. "_What now_?"

"Mr. Purcell?" She forced her voice to remain calm and even. "Mr. Purcell, it's Detective Benson."

"_Detective Benson._" The shortness and impatience in his voice was gone now, replaced by a smugness. "_I didn__'t __expect you to get here so fast._"

"Why are you doing this?" she pressed. "What do you want?"

"_You know what I want, Detective_," he replied smoothly. "_I want my son. And I want that bitch punished for taking him away from me._"

Olivia bit back every instinctive response, everything she would have said had this conversation taken place under any other circumstances. The man was disgusting, but he was also the man holding lives in his hands. She couldn't get him angry.

"We can talk about that," she replied instead, even more forced calm in her voice. "But first I need to know more about the situation inside. How many people are there?"

"_Twenty-four_," he replied smoothly. Olivia waved at the negotiator for a pad of paper and scribbled _24 hostages_ even as she assessed the exactness of the number. He had counted so he'd know if anyone tried to leave, and she would bet the hostages knew it.

"How many children?"

"_Nine_."

_9 children_, she scribbled below the first message, and was gratified as she heard someone relay it over the radio. "Mr. Purcell, I know you miss your son." She almost choked on the words, but she had to say it if her idea was going to work. "You love him very much, don't you?"

"_Yes._" Still the smugness, but sentimentality underneath it. She remembered, feeling sick as she did, how her own rapist father had kept pictures of her around.

"He was innocent." That she could say sincerely, although in most cases it would be the true victim - the child's mother - she would be trying to convince, rather than the man in the library.

"_Yes_," Purcell replied. "_He was innocent._"

"You have nine children in there," she said evenly. "_Young _children, right?"

"_Yes_."

"They're innocent too," she said softly. _If this fails..._ "They're too young to know anything about the things adults do to each other. Innocent. Let them go. Let the innocent go free. Let the children go."

The few seconds of silence were the longest few seconds of her life. Finally, he spoke. "_All right. But only the children._"

She breathed out deeply, muting the audio input to the phone. "He's agreed to release the children," she told the officers standing by. "Be warned, they're very young and likely to be scared. Some may even try to reenter the building because their parents are in there. Officers should be present and ready to take the children to safety as soon as they're out. If those officers have some experience with children, so much the better."

"Understood, Detective. Come on."

The children came out of the library, all holding hands. Some couldn't be more than two or three years old. The officers were there at once, and Olivia was pleased to see that clearly, her suggestions had been taken seriously. The officers were surrounding the kids, picking up a few of the smaller ones, urging the others to keep running until they were in the safe zone, but there was a gentleness that most of them wouldn't have bothered with for adults, even adult victims.

Then something hit Olivia in the legs, and a voice cried out "Livvie!" She looked down and instantly felt her heart break. The child clinging to her legs was familiar. _Too_ familiar.

"Eli?" she gasped.

"Livvie!" he said again.

She reached down and picked him up, holding him to her chest. _Elliot's son was in that building._ And if that fact alone weren't bad enough, it meant that either Elliot or Kathy was in that building right now.

She picked the phone up again, shifting Eli into one arm. "Mr. Purcell?"

"_I let them go_," he said sharply. "_I kept my word. I let them go!_"

"I know. You did a good thing." She squeezed Eli a little tighter as if to remind herself of the truth in that statement. At least the kids were safe. "Now, why don't you tell me what it might take for you to release the others?"

"_You know what I want. _You_ took them away from me. Tell me where they are_."

"I don't know," she replied honestly. "I tried to talk her out of it, Mr. Purcell. And even if I had helped her, she would have gone somewhere I couldn't find her, just in case I changed my mind." Olivia wasn't positive that last was true, but if she could make him believe it, she might be able to make him realize that what he was asking was impossible.

"_Are you so sure? I've looked into you, _Detective Benson_. I know who you are. I know about your mother - and your father. Tell me, Detective, how do you know your mother didn__'t __do to your father what that bitch Avery did to me?_"

_You mean, how do I know that he did to her what you did to Avery?_ But she had enough self-control not to say it aloud, and not just because it would probably set him off. However much she bristled at his question, there _had_ been a time she wasn't sure, where she had chased down a dead-end lead just to see if her mother couldn't possibly have lied all those years.

"I suppose I don't," she replied, hating the words, hating herself for saying them, "but that's not relevant right now. They've both been dead for over ten years, whatever happened between them died with them. What's relevant right now is you and the people in there with you. None of them are Avery. None of them hurt you. But as long as you're holding those innocent people against their will, the police will only see you as an enemy. Let them go, and when they all come out unharmed, you'll give the police a reason to see you as a good guy."

There was a silence on the other end. He was apparently considering it.

That was when all hell broke loose.

She heard through the phone a crash of breaking glass, and then Purcell cried out. She turned to the police behind her, who were all talking at once. "What's going on?"

"One of our sharpshooters fired. Hit him in the shoulder."

"I was just starting to get through to him!" She cried in dismay. "Now..."

"_You tricked me!_" Purcell was back on the phone.

"Mr. Purcell..." she protested, but he wasn't listening anymore. Then she heard three bangs in quick succession.

She muted the phone again, turning to report this development, but from the sudden scrambling, she knew it was unnecessary. The SWAT team rushed the doors of the library, and Olivia listened anxiously to the radio, trying to figure out what was happening, trying to figure out what if anything she could do.

"_Purcell is down_," she heard someone say. "_Probable DOA_. _We have thirteen hostages coming out, two inside who will need EMT immediate assistance._"

Olivia watched the doors anxiously as the hostages emerged, some running from the building, others being assisted towards the waiting ambulances. Parents ran to their children, holding them. But there was no sign of anyone she knew.

She felt her heart clench, and only the fact that Eli was in her arms kept her on her feet. She felt a hand take her arm in a supportive grasp. "Liv? Are you okay?"

"Nick," she gasped. "I need to go in there."

He raised an eyebrow but to his credit didn't argue. "You want me to take him?"

She nodded. "Eli, this is my friend Nick, okay? Can you stay with him?"

Eli looked understandably confused, but he didn't protest as Nick lifted him out of Olivia's arms. She remembered that Nick's daughter was almost the same age, and he was clearly more than able to handle the situation. Olivia barely remembered to pull out her badge and make it clearly visible as she sprinted into the building.

Purcell lay on the floor in a pool of blood, and even at a distance Olivia could see he wasn't moving or breathing. Two other people lay on the floor as well, surrounded by police and EMTs.

The first she reached was a woman wearing a librarian's badge, visibly gasping for breath and bleeding from several wounds as the EMTs stabilized her. But Olivia's eyes were drawn to the second cluster of EMTs. The first thing she saw was long blonde hair. The second was blood. Lots of it.

Her heart almost stopped. _Please, no. _But then a voice spoke, and she knew it was true. "Have...to call..."

She pushed her way into the crowd and knelt beside the woman. "Kathy?"

Her head turned weakly. "O...livia?"

"I'm here," she said gently.

"E-eli?"

"He's safe. Your son is safe." _God, there's so much blood..._ "Just hold on. I know he wants to be back with you."

"Elliot... I have to...call Elliot..."

"We tried," one of the EMTs said to Olivia in an undertone, "but she's panicked and between that and blood loss, she can't remember the number."

"You have a phone?"

He held it out and she took it, punching in Elliot's number. The EMT reached out for it, and though Olivia wanted nothing more than to let him make the notification, she shook her head anyway, keeping hold of the phone. Then _his_ voice came through. "_Hello_?"

"Elliot?"

"_Liv? Is everything okay?_"

"El, it's Kathy. She's hurt."

"_What? How bad?_"

"I don't know." She hoped he didn't hear what she didn't say.

"_What happened?_"

Olivia swallowed, but she couldn't lie to him. "Someone took hostages in the library. She was shot_._"

"_Oh, my God._" The complete disbelief in his voice broke Olivia's heart. "_Eli?_"

"He's fine. He got out before the shooting started."

"_T__hank God for that._" His audible relief was tempered by concern. "_And Kathy?_"

"She wants to talk to you. Here."

Kathy's hands were too weak to hold the phone, so Olivia held it to her face, careful not to get in the EMTs' way.

"El?" she gasped out.

"_Hey, sweetheart_," he said, in the forced calm tone Olivia recognized from her years as his partner. "_How you holding up?_"

"They're taking good care of me," she replied, her voice cracking. "El, I love you. I love you so much."

Olivia had to turn away to blink back the tears in her eyes as her old partner replied. "_Don't talk like that, baby. I'll see you at the hospital, okay?_"

"I love you," she repeated, weaker and yet more forcefully. "El, please..."

"_Love you too, Kath._" God, his voice was so shaky, as though it could break at any second. He clearly understood what could happen.

"All right, we need to move her now." The EMT's moved Olivia out of the way, and with her the phone in her hand. She put it back up to her ear. "Elliot, they're just putting her in the ambulance, that's all."

"_What hospital?_"

"Mercy's closest. I'll bring Eli to meet you there."

"_Thank you._"

Olivia hurried out just ahead of the EMTs and ran to where her partner was standing, making sure to stand between Eli and the doors his mother was being carried out of. He attached himself to her again, and she buried his head in her shoulder. Nick looked from the stretcher, to Eli, and then to Olivia, who read the question in his eyes and nodded. He looked back at the boy, his face filled with sympathy and regret.

xxxxxxxxx

"Mr. Stabler?"

Elliot stood to approach the doctor, and Olivia reached her arms out for the child he'd been holding since he arrived in the hospital. He placed Eli in her arms; the six-year-old stirred a little but didn't wake up.

Olivia couldn't hear what the doctor was saying, but she didn't need to. She knew him well enough, and in any case, his reaction wasn't hard to read. She saw his skin pale, his shoulders slump, and she knew.

She set Eli down on the waiting room couch and slowly walked up behind her best friend. She knew he knew she was there, but he didn't turn to look at her, didn't acknowledge her.

She placed a hand on his shoulder, at a complete loss for words. He turned suddenly, bringing his arms up around her, burying his face in her neck. "She's gone, Liv," he gasped out. "My wife -"

"Shh." She brought her hand up to rub his back. "I know."

"What do I do now?"

He sounded so lost she wanted to cry. _I don't know._ She couldn't say it aloud, and she didn't know what else to say.

******I said I'd write an EO fic in the same universe as ****__****Close to Home********, and here it is! Of course, it'll be a few chapters before we get to the serious EO, but hopefully you'll bear with me.**

******Please review.**


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